Chapter 106: You Make Me Smile

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For a moment, everyone had thought Cooper was about to steal the team’s little “muscle king” joke.

They had seen how hard he worked. He had not only finished every piece of the brutal camp schedule, he had asked for extra work afterward. Nolan, on the other hand, had spent half the camp looking almost casual. Sometimes he disappeared for long stretches and no one knew where he had gone.

Then Nolan took off his shirt.

The doubt vanished.

At a glance, he was bigger than he had been a month earlier. Not merely heavier. Bigger in the way that made the room go quiet before anyone could decide what joke to make.

Cooper stared at him.

‘He was training in secret again.’

The thought came with enough bitterness to taste.

Nolan walked onto the scale as if the result had never worried him. He had not checked privately before this. There had been no need.

The number settled at 220 pounds.

One hundred kilos, give or take.

The height mark gave him another centimeter. His flexed arm measured about fifty centimeters, nearly nineteen and three-quarter inches. The seams between his shoulders, chest, and neck had grown visibly thicker, and every part of him looked trained. Not just the show muscles the strength coach had named during camp. The whole body.

It was the difference between a strong high school player and someone built like a professional bodybuilder who had somehow kept the mobility of a quarterback.

“No way,” Monster muttered.

Alberto looked at him, then back at Nolan. His expression said the same thing.

In their world, bodies did not change that fast without help.

They also knew enough locker-room mythology to look for the ugly signs: waterlogged swelling, strange bloat, the look of muscle added too quickly and too carelessly. Monster had started to show a little of that himself after his own private support. Nolan had none of it.

That made the result feel even more unreasonable.

Nolan stepped down from the scale and spread his hands.

“I already shared my training method with you.”

He did not say the rest out loud.

If you did not reach my level, maybe you did not work hard enough.

Cooper clenched his jaw so hard his cheek twitched. For one second, he wanted to rush over and tackle Nolan just to make the smug look disappear.

Secret training. False laziness. Letting everyone relax, then pretending the gap was their fault.

‘I am catching you one day.’

He tightened his fists.

He did not know the truth. No matter how much sweat he poured out, no ordinary effort was going to pass Nolan’s impossible advantage.

Still, Cooper was not the only one changed by camp.

Even Rice had adapted. Somewhere between the vomiting, the sandbag runs, the curfew, the film sessions, and the controlled meals, he had started to enjoy the rhythm. Watching the body become stronger piece by piece was its own kind of reward. It produced a cleaner rush than parties, girls, or the lazy comfort he had once thought he wanted.

The others felt it too.

The official camp was over, but the discipline it had forced into them stayed. Several players quietly decided to keep training on their own, to improve in secret, and then shock everyone all over again.

Nolan, of course, remained the biggest winner.

His body had climbed into a range that belonged to elite quarterbacks at their physical peak. Against high school defenses, the gap now felt absurd, like an older athlete stepping into a younger league and refusing to play politely.

Past that lay open territory.

No one had really built a path for a quarterback like this before: a passer with skill, timing, field control, and a body that could break the pocket by force when the field demanded it.

If he kept climbing, he would not be copying the old model.

He would be building the road himself.

…

The white BMW convertible climbed the road toward Griffith Observatory, wind tearing softly through the open cabin.

Jennifer Love Hewitt held one hand over her hair and looked across the hood as Los Angeles dropped away behind them.

“So this is the car your football money bought?”

She had told him before that he needed a car if he wanted to take her anywhere. At the time, it had been an easy way to say yes without saying it too directly. If Nolan had shown up without one, she probably would have borrowed her family’s car.

Instead, he had arrived in a white convertible.

At first she assumed he had rented it to show off.

Nolan eased off the gas as the road curved. “That is right.”

He had earned it with labor, nerves, and a talent for seeing profit where other people saw embarrassment. That counted.

“I do not believe you,” Jennifer said, laughing. “High school athletes are not supposed to do commercial work.”

“They’re not,” Nolan said. “That does not mean I cannot make money.”

“Now I really want to hear this.”

“Fine. A few months ago, at a school dance, I sold medicine.”

He told her the origin story with enough honesty to make it worse. The expired condoms. The deliberately overpriced emergency-contraception packets put together through a shady pharmacy connection. Rice buying from the wrong box. The girl’s family making noise. The opening that pushed Rice out and moved Nolan closer to Adam’s job.

Jennifer laughed so hard she had to cover her mouth.

“Your brain is entirely wasted on crooked ideas.”

“Not wasted. Invested.”

“That is worse.”

“It worked.”

He continued with the rest: Murphy’s bonuses, the school sales, the charity events, the way he handled the team’s operating budget, and the money he had skimmed legally enough from arranging the training camp.

By the time he finished, Jennifer had stopped doubting the BMW.

“That is smart,” she admitted. “I hate that it is smart.”

“You were busy thinking about your album.”

That pulled her into a different kind of brightness. “I have been recording for months. I dream about vocal takes now.”

She started naming songs from the project: Kiss Away from Heaven, Let’s Go Bang, You Make Me Smile. Then she hummed a little of the melody, barely louder than the wind, her voice clear and sweet enough to make the moment feel less like a drive and more like a private rehearsal under the city lights.

Nolan had to admit it. She had a good voice.

At the most confident part, she stopped and hugged her arms.

“It is cold.”

“Almost there.”

One minute later, the car rolled to a stop below the observatory, near the overlook where the city opened like a sheet of light. In later years, the spot would become crowded with tourists and movie lovers. In 1994, most people still pushed up toward the observatory itself, leaving this edge comparatively quiet.

Only then did Nolan take off his dark green flight jacket and drape it over her shoulders.

“So you did hear me.”

“Eventually.”

They walked toward the railing. A few couples lingered at a distance, silhouettes pressed together under the weak lamps.

Nolan stepped over first, then offered Jennifer his hand.

“Isn’t this a little dangerous?”

“Only if you make it dramatic.”

She tried to climb over by herself. Nolan caught her around the waist and set her down on the safe side of the ledge before she could wobble.

“You really are tall,” she said, measuring him with her hand.

Beside him, the jacket nearly swallowed her.

They sat near the overlook. Downtown glowed below them, lines of traffic cutting through the dark like molten wire.

“This is beautiful,” Jennifer said. “I wish we had a camera.”

Nolan stood without answering.

When he came back, he was carrying a Hasselblad.

Jennifer stared at it. “Of course you have a camera.”

“For emergencies.”

“This is not an emergency.”

“It is if the view is good.”

She directed him from place to place, pointing out angles across the city and making him take the same skyline twice because she insisted the second one would be better. Then she took the camera and made him pose too.

At the end, Nolan set the timer and joined her. Jennifer leaned into his side, still wrapped in his jacket. His arm rested loosely around her shoulders. The shutter clicked with the two of them young, bright, and smiling too hard for the night to keep its dignity.

On the drive back, Jennifer kept fussing with the camera.

“I look awful when I laugh.”

“No, you do not.”

“You have not even seen the developed pictures.”

“I have instincts.”

Nolan let her play with the camera without worry. When he had gone back to the car for it, he had also changed the roll of film.

Nothing private, careless, or useful to the wrong person would be left behind.

…

Friday arrived on schedule.

Beverly Hills High School took the field against Bishop Gorman High School, a Las Vegas private-school power with enough size and history to make the matchup feel dangerous.

Before kickoff, the student section sang We Are the Champions at the top of its lungs.

Nolan jogged out through the noise and looked toward the stands. Sure enough, Jennifer was there in the student section, dressed in her fluorescent jacket, hard hat, and work pants like she had wandered off a construction site and decided to become team spirit.

She saw him looking and waved.

Nolan turned back, calm as ever, and put on his helmet.

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I hope this chapter drew you further into the story. Stick around, because there’s still a lot waiting just ahead.